This helped me pass the 70-341 more than the exam reference guide, and I didn't even read all of it. Well written and informative and I'll probably refer to this book often. As others have noted, the binding is at-risk. Go in knowing you have to treat it with kid-gloves and you probably will be OK.

I've worked with Microsoft Exchange since 1996 as a consultant (Version 4.0) and Paul and Tony have been experts in the field most of that time. They have a wealth of knowledge on Microsoft Exchange and email and in particular I liked how Paul linked in details on the email clients and Lync integration. I wish the book included a case study of a customer migrating to Exchange 2013 for both a SMB and large firm as that would've completed this book as well as having a list of suggested web and blog sites for additional information.

I read this book & "Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Inside Out Mailbox and High Availability". Both were great Exchange Server 2013 (On-Premises) books. Defiantly recommend these 2 books if you are moving to or have Exchange Server 2013.

Been reading Tony Redmond and Paul Robichaux since Exchange 2000 / 2003. Their books are excellent. No exception to these ones. Combine it with J. Peter Bruzzese's online course on Pluarsight (used to be Train Signal), a virtual test environment and you'll be up and running. CBT Nuggets is highly recommended as well.As a side note (if anyone is interested in my experience) on a dedicated server Hyper-V naturally works very well. On a workstation with Windows 8.1, which you need to reboot, put in power-save mode quite often, VMware Workstation is a much better choice. With Hyper-V at least I often lost network connections and once or twice ended up with corrupt VMs.